I know little about cards or their games,
how to shuffle a deck in preparation for play,
preventing prearrangements, aka cheating.
The cards in a muddled mess,
just like life.
The game won or lost fairly,
just like life.
I once called a 4 of clubs a 4 of clovers. Everyone laughed.
You’ve got to admit it looks more like a clover than a club.
Social conformity requires that we ignore the obvious.
Ignorance is beneficial to the maintaining of quo*,
especially the standing of status and class.
December, 1959 in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada,
holed-up for two nights with four strangers, I was privy
to watch them play poker, five card stud.
I marveled at the attention these players paid to opponents,
their eyes observing body language; the frozen smile,
the trembling hand, the tapping fingers, the lip twitch,
the mask of confidence belying a bad random hand,,
the lucky blush emanating from behind the lobes,
the ears vacuuming verbal clues, the sigh, the laugh,
the well calculated craft of the nervous cough.
I heard the soft chatter of a shuffled deck,
admired the deftness needed to fan a fist of cards,
the digit dexterity, the maneuvering skill,
the choreography of wrist, pinky and thumb,
not to mention the calculating power of the brain
as I watched them arrange their cards in a strategic array,
selecting some, rejecting others, then tossing a straight flush
or a full house on the table to induce damage as a good hand
comes to rest among competing stratagems.
That’s what I saw because
that’s what I wanted to see.
But there might have been more,
under the table, up a sleeve.
Does a rectification need to be made?
The second and third lines of this poem misrepresent
the game of life. Everyone does not begin
with a thoroughly shuffled deck, some decks are stacked,
the outcome determined from the start.
Some players do not take chances with chance.
The odds of winning for some are slim,
The odds of losing for others, also slim.
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*status quo (Latin) = things as they are, not as they could be.